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Cultural Methods
Cultural methods are agriculture practices used to enhance crop and livestock health and prevent weed, pest or disease problems without the use of chemical substances. Examples include the selection of appropriate varieties and planting sites; selection of appropriate breeds of livestock; providing livestock facilities designed to meet requirements of species or type of livestock; proper timing and density of plantings; irrigation; and extending a growing season by manipulating the microclimate with green houses, cold frames, or wind breaks. Helps in proper farming methods History #In the period preceding chemical fertilizer and pesticide use, agriculture played an important part in society. Agricultural output represented the strength of a country, considered directly proportional to its military power and the produce available to support the army in sustained operation. Critical to resources, soil fertility is critical to a successful agricultural economy. ## Cultural meth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agriculture
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output. , small farms produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than . However, five of every six farm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Livestock
Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to animals which are raised for consumption, and sometimes used to refer solely to farmed ruminants, such as cattle, sheep, and goats. The breeding, maintenance, slaughter and general subjugation of livestock called ''animal husbandry'', is a part of modern agriculture and has been practiced in many cultures since humanity's transition to farming from hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Animal husbandry practices have varied widely across cultures and periods. It continues to play a major economic and cultural role in numerous communities. Livestock farming practices have largely shifted to intensive animal farming. Intensive animal farming increases the yield of the various commercial outputs, but also nega ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irrigation
Irrigation (also referred to as watering of plants) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been developed by many cultures around the world. Irrigation helps to grow crops, maintain landscapes, and revegetation, revegetate disturbed soils in dry areas and during times of below-average rainfall. In addition to these uses, irrigation is also employed to protect crops from frost, suppress weed growth in grain fields, and prevent soil consolidation. It is also used to cool livestock, reduce dust, dispose of sewage, and support mining operations. Drainage, which involves the removal of surface and sub-surface water from a given location, is often studied in conjunction with irrigation. There are several methods of irrigation that differ in how water is supplied to plants. Surface irrigation, also known as gravity irrigation, is the olde ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Growing Season
A season is a division of the year marked by changes in weather, ecology, and the amount of daylight. The growing season is that portion of the year in which local conditions (i.e. rainfall, temperature, daylight) permit normal plant growth. While each plant or crop has a specific growing season that depends on its genetic adaptation, growing seasons can generally be grouped into macro-environmental classes. Axial tilt of the Earth inherently affect growing seasons across the globe. Geography Geographic conditions have major impacts on the growing season for any given area. Latitude is one of the major factors in the length of the growing season. The further from the equator one goes, the angle of the Sun gets lower in the sky. Consequently, sunlight is less direct and the low angle of the Sun means that soil takes longer to warm during the spring months, so the growing season begins later. The other factor is altitude, with high elevations having cooler temperatures which short ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Microclimate
A microclimate (or micro-climate) is a local set of atmosphere of Earth, atmospheric conditions that differ from those in the surrounding areas, often slightly but sometimes substantially. The term may refer to areas as small as a few square meters or smaller (for example a raised-bed gardening, garden bed, underneath a rock, or a cave) or as large as many square kilometers. Because climate is statistics, statistical, which implies Spatial analysis, spatial and temporal variation of the mean values of the describing parameters, microclimates are identified as statistically distinct conditions which occur and/or persist within a region. Microclimates can be found in most places but are most pronounced in topographically dynamic zones such as mountainous areas, islands, and coastal areas. Microclimates exist, for example, near bodies of water which may cool the local atmosphere, or in heavy urban areas where brick, concrete, and Asphalt concrete, asphalt absorb the sun's energy, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soil Fertility
Soil fertility refers to the ability of soil to sustain agricultural plant growth, i.e. to provide plant habitat and result in sustained and consistent yields of high quality.Bodenfruchtbarkeit Retrieved on 2015-11-09. It also refers to the soil's ability to supply plant/crop nutrients in the right quantities and qualities over a sustained period of time. A fertile soil has the following properties: * The ability to supply essential plant nutrients and water in adequate amounts and proportions for plant growth and reproduction; and * The absence of toxic substances which may inhibit plant growth e. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slash And Burn
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegetation, or "slash", is then left to dry, usually right before the rainiest part of the year. Then, the biomass is burned, resulting in a nutrient-rich layer of ash which makes the soil fertile, as well as temporarily eliminating weed and pest species. After about three to five years, the plot's productivity decreases due to depletion of nutrients along with weed and pest invasion, causing the farmers to abandon the field and move to a new area. The time it takes for a swidden to recover depends on the location and can be as little as five years to more than twenty years, after which the plot can be slashed and burned again, repeating the cycle. In Bangladesh and India, the practice is known as jhum or jhoom. Slash-and-burn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terra Preta
''Terra preta'' (, literally "black soil" in Portuguese language, Portuguese), also known as Amazonian dark earth or Indian black earth, is a type of very dark, fertile human impact on the environment, anthropogenic soil (anthrosol) found in the Amazon Basin. In Portuguese its full name is or ' ("black soil of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indian", "Indians' black earth"). ''Terra mulata'' ("mulatto earth") is lighter or brownish in color. ''Terra preta'' owes its characteristic black color to its weathered charcoal content, and was made by adding a mixture of charcoal, bones, broken pottery, compost and manure to the low fertility Amazonian soil. A product of indigenous Indigenous peoples of the Amazon, Amazonian soil management and slash-and-char agriculture, the charcoal is stable and remains in the soil for thousands of years, binding and retaining minerals and nutrients. ''Terra preta'' is characterized by the presence of low-temperature charcoal residues in high ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subsoil
Subsoil is the layer of soil under the topsoil on the surface of the ground. Like topsoil, it is composed of a variable mixture of small particles such as sand, silt and clay, but with a much lower percentage of organic matter and humus. The subsoil is labeled the soil horizon, B Horizon in most soil mapping systems. Because it has less organic matter than topsoil, subsoil soil color, soil colour is mainly derived from iron oxides. Iron oxides and clay minerals form due to soil formation, weathering. Rainfall moves these weathering products downward as solutes and colloids by rainfall. The subsoil is the depth where these weathering products accumulate. The accumulation of clay minerals, iron, aluminum, and organic compounds is called illuviation. Whereas the topsoil tends to be the depth of greatest physical, chemical, and biological activity, the subsoil is the depth of most deposition. Due to physical, chemical, and biological activity, the subsoil generally has a soil struct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organic Movement
The organic movement broadly refers to the organizations and individuals involved worldwide in the promotion of organic food and other organic products. It started during the first half of the 20th century, when modern large-scale agricultural practices began to appear. Definition An organic product can broadly be described as not containing toxic chemicals (including synthetic pesticides, arsenic-containing herbicides, fertilization biosolids, chemical food additives, antibiotics, synthetic hormones, and industrial solvents). In addition to the absence of artificial chemicals, "organic" means not genetically engineered, and having not used ionizing irradiation, which can cause free-radicals and the removal of vitamins. For example, USDA organic restricts against such things, including genetic engineering in products or in the products' animal feed, and automatically disallows the use of GMO products as being labelled as Organic and allows the use of "Non- GMO" labelling s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organic Farming
Organic farming, also known as organic agriculture or ecological farming or biological farming,Labelling, article 30 o''Regulation (EU) 2018/848 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2024 on organic production and labelling of organic products and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007.''/ref> is an agricultural system that emphasizes the use of naturally occurring, non-synthetic inputs, such as compost manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation, companion planting, and mixed cropping. Biological pest control methods such as the fostering of insect predators are also encouraged. Organic agriculture can be defined as "an integrated farming system that strives for sustainability, the enhancement of soil fertility and biological diversity while, with rare exceptions, prohibiting synthetic pesticides, antibiotics, synthetic fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, and growth hormones". It originate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soil Health
Soil health is a state of a soil meeting its range of ecosystem functions as appropriate to its environment. In more colloquial terms, the health of soil arises from favorable interactions of all soil components (living and non-living) that belong together, as in microbiota, plants and animals. It is possible that a soil can be healthy in terms of ecosystem functioning but not necessarily serve crop production or human nutrition directly, hence the scientific debate on terms and measurements. Soil health testing is pursued as an assessment of this status but tends to be confined largely to agronomic objectives. Soil health depends on soil biodiversity (with a robust soil biology, soil biota), and it can be improved via soil management, especially by care to keep protective living covers on the soil and by natural (carbon-containing) soil amendments. Inorganic fertilizers do not necessarily damage soil health if they are not used in excess, and if they bring about a general improveme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
